Music and Electronic Projects

Electric Harp Ukulele

Here’e something a little different. It’s a ukulele with three extra harp strings. I want to eventually build an acoustic harp ukulele too someday, but I thought I’d tackle this first.

Here’s a early plan of what I thought the electric harp ukulele would look like. I originally wanted to have individual pickups for each set of strings, two volume controls, and a selector switch. I also planned on using a curved control plate. After laying out the parts, I realized that the body would be too crowded if I didn’t modify the design a bit.

The body is a solid slab of alder. I carved out an arm bevel on the upper left corner of the body.

I also put a “tummy cut” on the back.

After the body and neck were roughed out, I couldn’t help but put some yarn on the uke to mock up where the strings would go.

Here’s what the body looked like after the first coat of green wood stain.

Here’s the body after a few more coats of wood stain, and some Tru-Oil.

The neck is maple and the fretboard is rosewood. Instead of a chrome control plate, I made a custom maple one.

I bought the 7 string pickup and bridge from eBay because they are fairly uncommon items. The control plate has a master volume and the output jack.

Many people have asked about how the harp strings are tuned. They are tuned to whichever notes are needed for the song you are playing. I mainly tuned them to the root notes of the chords I am playing in the song.

I really pleased with the body color and and finish. I used Briwax Wood Dye and Tru-Oil.

This project turned out great. I’m pumped to make an acoustic harp ukulele now.